In the Beginning
The Ho-Chunk-gra and Four Lakes
The Ho-Chunk-gra (People of the Parent Speech, People of the Sacred Language, or People of the Big Voice) have been in Dejopera (de-jop-a-ra or The Four) for many millennia. The Ho-Chunk-gra claim thirteen Millennium and the last ice age of residency in what is now called Wisconsin. The Ho-Chunk-gra are descendants of the mound builders and they have the ancient oral history of the area's pre-Colonial territories and states. The Ho-Chunk-gra traditionally controlled the waterways and lakes along the Mississippi and the Great Lakes, along with all the tributaries before the colonial settlers arrived in the old North-West territory of North America. “Čihoboxįį́ḱ era” (chee-ha-bo-kee-kay-ta-la)” which translates to mean “where the Tipis are,” is the Ho-Chunk-gra name for what we today refer to as Lake Monona. Monona is a Meskwaki word meaning “fairy,” but the Meskwaki did not name it. It appears in history that a City surveyor suggested both the names for Lake Mendota and Lake Monona. How are these Ho-Chunk-gra names and places to be remembered when most Madisonians only know John Nolen, Frank Lloyd Wright, and James Duane Doty?
1893
The Frank Lloyd Wright Boathouse
In 1893 a group of progressive business leaders led by John Olin, Madison’s great park visionary and the father of our park system, solicited pledges from Madison business leaders to build a large public boathouse at the foot of King Street to replace dozens of ugly and illegal private boathouses running between South Blair and South Butler. They hired Frank Lloyd Wright, “a former Madison boy” who had just opened an architectural practice in Chicago to design the building. The circular building with a conical roof was intended as a punctuation point at the end of King Street. Unfortunately, the boathouse was never built due to a serious and abrupt depression in 1894.
1908
Madison: A Model City
In 1908 John Olin and a progressive group of business leaders persuaded the Common Council to hire John Nolen, the nation's leading urban planner, to do a comprehensive plan for Madison. The centerpiece of Nolen's plan, first revealed at a public meeting in 1909, was a Grand Esplanade, a 40-acre water-fronting park running from Spaight Street to the railroad crossing in Brittingham Bay.
The key element of the plan was a two-block long platform built over four railroad tracks (where Monona Terrace is located today) with stairs cascading down to a spacious formal waterfront park. Nolen’s plan was published in book form in 1911. However, Madison leaders did not begin to implement the Nolen plan for a grand lake-fronting park until the 1930s.
1967
Monona Basin Plan
The defeat of the Frank Lloyd Wright's “auditorium” in the 1962 referendum led to a second plan that was executed by Taliesin Associated Architects, Wright's on-going architectural firm, then led by William Wesley Peters. The key feature of this plan for the area between today's Monona Terrace and Machinery row was an expanded lakefront park, a community center, and a marina. The Common Council approved a slightly modified master plan, but it never advanced because the cost of the auditorium came in over budget and newly-elected Mayor Dyke opposed it.
1938-1997
Monona Terrace
Monona Terrace and superlatives are good friends. It was the largest, most expensive, most controversial, most frequently redesigned building, and required more time (21 years) than any other building that Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed, and it was the only one where he was elected to be its architect.
Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center opened its doors in 1997. Today, nearly 390,000 people say “see you at Monona Terrace” each year. From formal events like conventions and conferences to public events like Dane Dances, Monona Terrace has a wide geographic draw, attracting local, regional, state and international events each year.
2014
Nolen Centennial Project
The Nolen Centennial Plan was promoted by the civic-minded supermarket entrepreneurs Tim and Kevin Metcalfe. Digging into their own pockets, they hired Vandewalle and Associates as design consultants and plumbed various stakeholders for their ideas.
The resulting plan starts at the South Beltline and ends at Monona Terrace. It includes the notion of a wide, pedestrian-friendly “land bridge” over car-jammed John Nolen Drive to connect south Madison and the Alliant campus to Lake Monona and Law Park and to those enhanced recreational venues in Olin and Turville parks.
2015
Kenton Peters Plan
Madison Architect and Developer, Kenton Peters proposed a redevelopment of Law Park that included a terraced “esplanade” or lake park built over John Nolen Drive and railroad tracks to the lakeshore. The new landscaped park would include everything from a restaurant to a glass-enclosed winter garden. “A city park in the heart of Downtown available to everybody, accessible to everybody.”
2016
Monona Terrace Expansion
Madison Design Professionals researched the layout of Monona Terrace and devised a means of connecting from within the existing structure to an expansion area to the east. This would allow a doubling of meeting and ballroom spaces, together with supporting functions. To be located over John Nolen Drive and the existing railroad tracks, the adjacent expansion would be behind the face of Monona Terrace, thereby assuring primacy of the existing structure. In this position, it could have both a habitable roof deck and connection to an adjacent park which could be built between the Downtown escarpment and the lake. A study by GRAEF engineers confirmed the feasibility.
2018
Madison Design Professionals Workshop
The Madison Design Professionals Workgroup is a volunteer team of talented design and planning professionals that formed in 2008 to prepare design visions for the Downtown Master Plan Update. Since 2012, the group has donated their time and expertise to develop a vison for expanding Law Park. In May 2017, they unveiled their transformative Nolen Waterfront Vision (three concepts) at the Madison Community Foundation 75th Anniversary Dinner at Monona Terrace.
Members of the Madison Design Professionals worked closely with recent UW-Madison Civil and Environmental Engineering graduates who had produced two creative Law Park Revitalization concepts as part of their Senior Capstone projects in the Spring semester, 2017. Additional landscape architecture and engineering professionals with significant experience on urban waterfront projects similar to the Nolen Waterfront, volunteered their services pro-bono to flesh out three conceptual planning teams.
Additional Resources
2015-2022
University of Wisconsin-Madison Capstone Design Projects
Law Park and the John Nolen Drive Causeway revitalization have been a design challenge for several University of Wisconsin-Madison capstone student teams from the department of civil & environmental engineering, and the planning & landscape achitecture department over the past seven years. The ideas have gained traction with key stakeholders at the city, county, and state level.
“I cannot over-emphasize the help we received from UW-Madison's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,” said Dave Mollenhoff, a local historian, book author and member of the Madison Design Professionals Workgroup. “I wish I had the time to tell you how they drilled down to the details of this project to produce reports that would cost thousands of dollars from consultants. This, friends, is a brilliant example of what we call the Wisconsin Idea.”
Additional Resources
2018
Destination District & Taskforce
The Destination District is a 500-acre gateway area between the beltline and downtown, encompassing 200 acres of park and open space, the Alliant Energy Center grounds, and the corridors to South Park Street, and surrounding neighborhoods. The vision is to transform the area into a vibrant convening district and Southside lakefront park by: activating the lakefront and creating a destination park that incorporates the 200-acres of park and open space; creating a safe pedestrian-oriented district that ties public and private development into a unified district; seamlessly connecting Southside neighborhoods to the lake district and downtown; and significantly increasing tax base and community revenue while increasing activities for residents and visitors.
The Destination District Task Force, a group of dedicated public and private civic leaders, has come together to help ensure the advancement and coordinated implementation of the Destination District Vision and its many components. As part their efforts, they also work to ensure the recommendations from the multi-jurisdictional 2018 Destination District Vision & Strategy are considered and incorporated into ongoing City and County planning and implementation efforts.
2019
Lake Monona Waterfront Preliminary Report
In 2019, the City of Madison Parks Division hired a multi-disciplinary consultant team led by SmithGroup to prepare a preliminary report for the Lake Monona Waterfront corridor. This pre-design document is the first phase of the planning initiative and is focused on developing base information for future planning work. The community engagement process utilized a multifaceted approach that included meetings with smaller takeholder groups, neighborhood associations, on-site intercept reviews, tabling at community festivals, online surveys and four community workshops (one held virtually due to COVID 19 restrictions). Outreach conveyed information on the planning area's history, previous planning efforts, current amenities and examples of how other municipalities are reconnecting with their waterfronts.
